I welcome the debate today, and thank the Welsh Conservatives for tabling this debate. I commend Plaid Cymru’s amendment, which I think is very timely indeed. The Cabinet Secretary for the economy has stated that he wants the north to be a part of the English Northern Powerhouse. Last summer, he also said he wanted mid Wales to join a midlands powerhouse. The First Minister is on record in this Chamber dismissing the idea of economic growth holes in the Valleys and in Gwent. So, we are left with a very inadequate economic paradigm from this Government, at least as far as economic geography is concerned.

In the absence of a Welsh Government economic plan for Wales—I echo the concerns expressed by the leader of the Conservative group on the delay in producing an economic plan for Wales. In the absence of such a plan, we are left to put together the fragments of what could possibly be a plan. Essentially, from what we’ve heard so far, this boils down to communities in the south, within a certain radius of Cardiff and Swansea, relying on trickle-down from those centres, whilst communities in the north and mid Wales hope for trickle-down from the midlands and the English Northern Powerhouse: city-centric trickle-down for the south, cross-border trickle-down for mid and north Wales. The fact that our political entity will not therefore be coterminous with our economic entities, I am sure, will lead to a lack of regeneration, a lack of opportunity and, almost certainly, a lack of political accountability. Instead, the Government should be considering what best practice there is at an international level for countries of a similar geography to Wales, with a similar industrial legacy and with a significant rural profile. In that sense, I would suggest that we would be better off looking at cross-border co-operation and economic co-operation that we can see in places like Malmö and Copenhagen—far better and far more useful, I think—that could deliver equitable economic regeneration. I give way.